Objectives Based Assurance Management

The NASA Office of Safety and Mission Assurance (OSMA) has pursued the development of an implementable objectives based strategy approach to managing several aspects of the assurance disciplines. Reliability and Maintainability (R&M) engineering and Software Assurance are among the initial disciplines tackled. The objectives based approach involves creating a hierarchy of interwoven objectives and strategies designed to effectively meet the top-level objective of being “as safe as reasonably possible” or to “perform as required over the life cycle.” The logical constructs emerge as tools to enhance management of the assurance functions for flight projects. This paper presents some clear examples of how an objectives based strategy can be effectively employed to promote: •flexible and tailorable standardization for a range of risk levels •rapid self-assessment for Verification & Validation (V&V) •risk acceptance through safety and assurance cases that aggregate the necessary evidence to demonstrate the desired project outcomes. Techniques developed to apply the hierarchy concept to management of assurance are presented, along with examples used to support the new OSMA policy framework. This clearly demonstrates the efficacy of the objectives based approach. This is based on research and practice within the assurance and systems engineering communities, and reflects a high degree of utility for the objectives based strategy among the assurance communities.